


this blood is not our own

by deepandlovelydark



Series: Second Chances [32]
Category: MacGyver (TV 1985)
Genre: Barbecue, F/M, Fights, Violence, mutual ptsd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 04:05:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14156313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: Nikki knows she shouldn't have him.But in this game, you take what you can get.Sometimes, you take it just because you can.





	this blood is not our own

**Author's Note:**

> ...I'd forgotten what a dark place I left Mac in, last time.
> 
> There's more story to tell after this, how Mac goes from here to the decades-old happy ending described in "Major Character Death". However...
> 
> well, I'm nicking bits of this wholesale for my Original Story, which I'm very happy about.

He smashes her coffee maker to atoms, for no reason whatsoever. 

In retaliation, she burns his flannel shirt on the barbecue grill. Not much of a loss- it’s too small for MacGyver, and stinks from another man’s sweat- but this is the right button to press. She wants to see him cry. 

Just once, to tell her that he’s still vulnerable. That somewhere, underneath his toughened, unreadable exterior, remains a trace of that mild Minnesotan. The one who gave her a hot chocolate gratis, once, when she’d forgotten her purse. She’s killed men who’ve done her better kindnesses than that. Why does that one favour stick in her mind so?

“I know what you’re trying to do,” he tells her, as they watch the cotton blazing red (darker and richer than the fading sunset). “It won’t work.”

“Phoenix doesn’t have time for amateurs,” Nikki says. “If I ever catch any sign of weakness in you, I’ll have to send you home.”

“Perish the thought. For the first time in my life, I don’t have one- and I think I can get used to it.”

This with sudden, grim enthusiasm; and Nikki can sense the gears meshing them together. As satisfying in her mind as any intel mission.

“From a purely technical point of view, I wouldn’t have advised doing that,” MacGyver says, coughing as the grill starts spewing choky black smoke. “Too many oil stains on that old rag.”

“I didn’t think you had anything else to burn.”

“I don’t.”

He slaps the lid on the grill, a little off-centre. She moves to adjust it; he grabs her wrist carelessly. 

“That’s not right. It’ll keep flaming away under there.” Nikki whips her hand around, a simple little lock of the type he should know by now but doesn’t. 

MacGyver learns quickly, though, and he grunts in acknowledgement. They run it back and forth a few times. 

“Yeah. Give it enough oxygen to burn itself out, that way there’ll be nothing left but ashes. You try to shut it down now, something’ll remain. Stick around, despite-”

“Sweet Murdoc?”

“What’s the world coming to, when you can’t trust an assassin to assassinate anymore?”

“I never thought it was worth that much in the first place. Not since my husband.”

“I’ve yet to be convinced that he was worth that much.” He’s picking up the motions now, so she ups the ante, by slapping him with the weapon closest to hand. Turns out to be a thick wooden spoon, which he snaps in two without a second thought. 

“Are you going to destroy all my possessions?”

“Only your cherished idols. Don’t you say to travel light?”

He can fix his way out of anything, and kill without breaking stride, but it’s his sweet-and-sour interrogation that’ll make him as an agent, she's sure. (She ought to know. Unless she’s already lost all perspective, and that is not a thought she will allow herself, when he is with her. It would demonstrate too much weakness.) 

“I’ve learned better since. No present baggage.” A spill of flame licks out from under the lid, hissing at the air. They ignore it. 

“There you are, then. You don’t need me to move in.”

“None of this is about need. I’m talking desire.”

Their half-fighting has stilled just long enough, for him to toss off a punch with a knee to follow. Puppy-dog. She lets him have the blow, then shoves him down against the patio. 

(There is a tear in his eye now, from fear or love. Or possibly smoke-damage. She’ll forgive it.)

“Desire? You’re so much like Murdoc. This is just the way he used to woo me, sex and violence and I don’t know the hell what, whatever was going on in his mind. So when he grabbed me I never knew if it’d be love or abuse or both-”

She stills, for a second, heart beating through the chaos. He takes advantage to pull back to a more favourable position; they feint and feint again. 

_ Not Murdoc. No. Anybody but him. _

“If you ever say that again- if you ever think it-”

“I will,” he warns. “Stop me.”

“Then at least tell me,” she asks, very weary, “whether it’s still him you want. You couldn’t kill him.”

“It was a better revenge than that. I’ve swapped- me for him. He gets to be the good guy now.”

“You’re saying we aren’t.”

“Of course not. What the hell else is Phoenix, besides a machine to let us play around and justify our tripping?”

“And you’re ducking the question. Who is it going to be, MacGyver? Guns at dawn, which one do you shoot to save the other?” 

“Shoot you both,” he says, without missing a note; but a look of genuine pain crosses his face now. 

She pounces. Squeezes his throat, tight enough to stop breath. He flails. Shoves the barbecue over, spilling the contents. Not close enough to burn them, and for a moment she thinks he’s failed- 

but once he’s grabbed the hot lid with a piece of smoldering rag, to hold to her face like a brand, she gets the idea. Backs off fast, before falling over the propane bottle. 

“Honestly, ” MacGyver says, tossing it aside to collapse in the grass besides her. “I don’t know why I’m fighting at this point, or for what, or why, I’ve been broken down and kicked my way back up so many times. I just know that when Jack Dalton asks me to jump, I'll jump. So if he asks me to save Murdoc, you’re going down.”

“Just like that? Without another thought?”

“Why do you think I’ve been avoiding him?” he asks, with characteristic wryness; and that final note of humour softens the moment at the last. Makes their scuffling in the dark seem playful. Petty, even. Well-versed in betrayals as she is, this one is uncannily cheerful.  

(She knows who he learned that joke from; and it wasn’t an Englishman.)

It’s a hard thing to fight, the self-hypnosis brought on by love. But he’s trying to rid himself of it. And fortunately for him, she’s an expert at this kind of de-programming.

"You owe me a new coffee maker."

"Fuck you," he murmurs, and does just that. 

(She cannot _imagine_ why Ellen left him.)


End file.
